According to
The Oprah Magazine there are 'multiple nods to
Jane Eyre' on Taylor Swift's new album
Folklore.
In addition to completing an entire 16-song album, it seems that Taylor Swift has spent her time in quarantine curled up with books. Her eighth studio album, Folklore, is teeming with literary references that made the ears of this former English major perk up and say, Did Ms. Swift really just make a reference to Jane Eyre, or am I dreaming?
Reader, I wasn't dreaming. With one close listen, it was clear that for her latest release, Swift purposefully interspersed her signature personal style of storytelling lyrics with many references to classic novels. [...]
Take the song "Invisible String" as a prime example of why Folklore is a literature lover's delight. Wildly romantic, the song appears to describe Swift's life before she met her current partner, actor Joe Alwyn, and how an "invisible string" connected them over the years. She sings in the chorus: "Isn't it just so pretty to think / All along there was some / Invisible string tying you to me," and, later on: "One single thread of gold / Tied me to you."
Upon hearing Swift sing these lyrics, I was jolted by a flashback to senior year of high school, the first time I encountered Jane Eyre's most enduring declaration of love. I'd been waiting hundreds of pages for the older, grumpy Rochester to melt and declare his feelings for Jane the governess—and I utterly melted when he finally did. (I was 17, all right?)
“I have a strange feeling with regard to you: as if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly knotted to a similar string in you. And if you were to leave I’m afraid that cord of communion would snap. And then I’ve a notion that I’d take to bleeding inwardly. As for you—you’d forget me," Rochester says, begging Jane to stay—even though he's about to marry another woman.
For the first time in the novel, Rochester characterizes the bond that ties him to Jane. Of course, Rochester's "string somewhere under [his] left ribs" is a bit more gory than Swift's "single thread of gold." But whether it's a Gothic novel or a pop song, the idea is the same: An inexplicable, near-fated connection that unites two people together.
Later on in that same scene, Rochester proposes to Jane—and she says yes, despite the fact that his track record with wives has been iffy, to say the least. His first wife, Bertha Mason, was locked in his mansion's attic for a decade (the definition of a red flag).
If we're to believe Swift spent quarantine underlining Jane Eyre, then the song "Mad Woman" may also allude to Bertha, Rochester's trapped wife—better known by her nickname, "the madwoman in the attic." The lyrics describe a phenomenon similar to the one that readers of Jane Eyre have oft debated: Was Bertha mad, or was she driven mad by her husband, by circumstances, and by by being a woman without agency? In the song, Swift sings, "Every time you call me crazy, I get more crazy."
Essentially, if "Invisible String" is the song for Jane Eyre, then "Mad Woman" is Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea, the humanizing novel told from Bertha's point-of-view. In "Mad Woman," Swift identifies the cycle of how perception can alter a person's sense of self—as if perception were, itself, a form of gaslighting. The chorus of "Mad Woman" goes: "No one likes a man woman / You made her like that." Then, once she's finally broken, she can be blamed, controlled, or hidden away in an attic: "And you'll poke that bear 'til her claws come out / And you find something to wrap your noose around." (Elena Nicolaou)
This reviewer from
The Times is not a fan of
Wuthering Heights:
“Some books are undeservedly forgotten; none are undeservedly remembered,” wrote WH Auden, who had obviously never heard of Wuthering Heights. (John Self)
Oxford Mail lists 'The best films ever made in Oxfordshire', including
3. Jane Eyre, 2011
A mousy governess who softens the heart of her employer soon discovers that he's hiding a terrible secret.
Director: Cary Joji Fukunaga
Starring: Mia Wasikowska, Michael Fassbender, Jamie Bell
Oxfordshire location: Banbury
Jane Eyre was filmed in Derbyshire, Oxfordshire and Hertfordshire. The scenes in Oxford were the crew filmed ‘Lowood School’ is Broughton Castle near Banbury in Oxfordshire. (Nicole Baddeley)
Jane Eyre 2011 also crops up on
ScreenRant's ranking of Jamie Bell's films according to Rotten Tomatoes.
5/10
Jane Eyre (2011) - 84%
A classic English period drama, Jane Eyre follows a young woman as she is employed by the gruff and elusive Mr. Rochester to work in his estate. The novel has been adapted many times, but this version from True Detective's Cary Joji Fukunaga has more of an edge to it. (Jack Cameron)
FarOut magazine tells about Kate Bush singing
Wuthering Heights during her
Tour of Life in 1979.
If there’s one thing you can always categorise Kate Bush as it has to be ‘unique’. The singer’s style is wholeheartedly idiosyncratic as she delves into the literary world for lyric inspiration, the ballet world for her performance and a whole other dimension for her vocals.
Perhaps one of the most pertinent showings of these attributes coming together is with Bush’s performance of ‘Wuthering Heights’ during her one and only tour, 1979’s Tour of Life. It’s a joy to behold.
The song is a remarkable feat for Bush. Released in 1978, the song was the first track to be written and performed by a female which went to number one in the charts. It’s an impressive breakthrough but it’s even more impressive when you remember the content of the song is steeped in literary history.
As anyone who has studied English Literature at school will be able to tell you, the track was undoubtedly inspired by the novel written by Emily Brontë of the same name. Written in 1847 and published under her pseudonym Ellis Bell, Brontë’s novel has become a cultural touchpoint across the world.
The novel may have been written in the Yorkshire moors but the song was written in a leafy South London suburb in March of ’77. As London was swollen with punk, positively pulsating with feverish anger, Kate Bush was creating a masterful pop record: “There was a full moon, the curtains were open and it came quite easily,” Bush told her fan club in 1979.
She told Record Mirror in 1978, “Great subject matter for a song. I loved writing it. It was a real challenge to precis the whole mood of a book into such a short piece of prose.”
Bush continued, “Also when I was a child I was always called Cathy not Kate and I just found myself able to relate to her as a character. It’s so important to put yourself in the role of the person in a song. There’s no half measures. When I sing that song I am Cathy. (Her face collapses back into smiles.) Gosh, I sound so intense. ‘Wuthering Heights’ is so important to me. It had to be the single. To me, it was the only one.”
This connection can most certainly be seen in the video below. The clip captures Bush performing the track at the Hammersmith Odeon as part of her one and only tour, the Tour of Life. While Bush would once again take residency in that corner of London back in 2014, these dates represented Bush in her prime and performing her songs like an entire theatrical production.
Rehearsal footage has shown how much Bush gave to her performance but if you ever needed confirmation then this physically draining performance of ‘Wuthering Heights’ is all you need to see. (Jack Whatley)
The clip is here.
The
Daily Mail puts an online tool for colorising B&W pictures to the test and apparently
FEMAIL put the claim to the test on pictures of well-known historical [fi]gures
They included Queen Victoria, Abraham Lincoln and author Charlotte Brontë.
Given that there are no extant pictures of Charlotte Brontë it's only natural that there's nothing more to that mention-no picture colorised or otherwise is shown below.
YourTango shares '50 Motivational Self-Respect Quotes To Remind You To Always Honor Yourself' including one from
Jane Eyre.
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